Death of an Author, page 8
“Exactly,” said Warner with his mischievous twinkle. “I expect she was quite glad to see you go home of an evening and to have the place to herself,—with her master for company.”
“This,” said Eleanor Clarke, “is a tale told by an idiot.”
Warner laughed outright.
“Which is the idiot, you or me?”
“Neither,” replied the other, “unless life makes idiots of us all.”
“Oh, that I refuse to believe,” said Warner. “My head is bloody but unbowed.”
“If you have finished your exposition of the Inquisitorial and Oracular mind, may I offer you a cup of coffee? I am thirsty—and my brain is reeling.”
“Thank you very much,” said Warner. “A cup of coffee would be most acceptable.”
Chapter VI
It was two days after Chief Inspector Warner’s interview with Eleanor Clarke that Scotland Yard received information about the fire at Sir Duncan Grant’s cottage; and Bond, summoned to the Yard to discuss the matter with Warner, looked less disgruntled than he had been doing recently.
“This gives us something to work on,” he said cheerfully. “This last week I’ve been chasing my own tail and getting nothing for it.”
“You wanted a corpse to get busy on, and now you’re supplied with one,” said Warner, “though whether the specimen they’ve provided at Ross will be really helpful, it’s too early to say. The bony portions of one solidly built Homo Sapiens leave plenty to the imagination.”
The facts were as follows. A farmer named Lewis, living at Kirkham-on-Wye, Herefordshire, had informed the local policeman that there had been a fire at Sir Duncan Grant’s cottage,—an ancient stone built house in the Wye valley.
The cottage stood a couple of hundred yards back from the river in a clearing in the woods which rose steeply up from the fertile river-pastures. Lewis farmed the grasslands in the valley, which were owned by Sir Duncan Grant, and he often cast a friendly eye on the cottage—Kirkham Barns, it was called—on behalf of the owner.
Grant, who lived in Ross, kept the cottage for use as a retreat where he stayed for an occasional week-end to fish in the waters of the Wye and to get a little rough shooting; but the place was unoccupied for the greater part of the year, and on account of its antiquity and lack of convenience it was somewhat despised by the inhabitants of the tiny village up above,—Kirkham was built on the crest of the hills on the right bank of the Wye.
Lewis, walking along the path by the river, intent on inspecting his pastures and considering the prospects of his stock, had just glanced up to the little clearing where stood the cottage, and what he saw made him gape. The cracked blackened windows and gaping roof told their own story—Kirkham Barns had been on fire and was now burnt out as thoroughly as its solid stone walls allowed. The farmer walked over the grass and pushed open the little gate in the wall which surrounded the small garden, and then stood by one of the windows and looked in. An acrid smell of burning filled his nostrils, and he could see that everything within the four walls of the cottage that could burn, had been reduced to charred fragments. The ceiling had fallen in and Lewis could see daylight through the gaping roof.
“Well, that’s a pretty mess, that is,” he soliloquised. “I wonder now… one of those tramps, as likely as not…” He stood with his ancient hat pushed back from his grizzled head and scratched his ear thoughtfully. It was a pity to see property destroyed, but he knew there was nothing of value in the cottage, and its ancientry made but small appeal to the unimaginative farmer. “A pretty mess, that be,” was his verdict, as he turned away and continued his walk along the pastures. His inspection accomplished, he climbed the steep hill which led from the river valley to the village above, pondering over his discovery to the tune of an occasional “Drat that now!” Lewis had planned out his morning satisfactorily and he didn’t want to put himself out. The nearest policeman lived at Ledwain, nearly three miles away,—but property was property and Sir Duncan Grant was his landlord. Lewis solved his problem by sending “the boy” into Ledwain on his bicycle with a short note which imparted the tidings to Walsh, the constable. Having done this, Lewis went about his morning’s work without telling anybody else of his discovery. None of the villagers would bother to go down “the steep”—as the hill was called—unless they had some definite reason for going, and the rather dour farmer liked to keep his own counsel. In the afternoon of the same day Walsh arrived to inspect the cottage. Feeling that it was his duty to make a full report on the matter, he pushed aside the remains of the front door, and shook his head over the foul-smelling debris on the floor,—tiles and bedstead and crockery all tangled up together amid the charred beams and fallen plaster. The cottage was divided into two rooms on the ground floor and the dividing wall still stood—two solid feet of undressed masonry with the doorway at one end. Entering gingerly with a glance at the charred beams which still stretched above his head, Walsh went through the door space to the further room. This had been used as a kitchen and the twisted metal work of a small oil range stood on the flags. There was a large open chimney space in the stone wall and when Walsh set eyes on it, he gave a grunt of sheer consternation, and nearly turned tail and fled.
Forty years’ service in the rural constabulary had not prepared him for a discovery such as this. Among the charred fragments in the open chimney there was something that had once been a human being; the fire had rendered the remains unrecognisable; whether a man or a woman had once inhabited that charred shell, Walsh could not tell—and he made no effort to find out. Going outside the cottage into the fresh sweetness of the April afternoon, he took off his helmet and mopped his brow. This sort of thing was strange to him, and he very definitely did not like it. Standing facing the river, he pondered over his next move; somebody more important than himself would have to enquire into this story,—but meanwhile there was no one at hand to act as messenger. The grasslands stretched unbroken for miles on either side and the nearest place to get assistance was the village of Kirkham “up the steep.” Walsh, after another unhappy glance inside the cottage, (he rather hoped that he had been the victim of a delusion) trudged up the steep hill and made his way to Lewis’s farm. After some argument, Walsh prevailed on the unwilling farmer to send a message to the Inspector at Ross, and the constable then walked down the steep once more, and stood guard over the ruined cottage until Inspector Foster came to join him. By the time the latter had arrived, Walsh had recovered from the shock of his discovery, and had begun to think things out. It was quite true,—as Lewis had suggested, that a tramp might have dossed down in the cottage—though tramps in the river valley were few and far between—but no tramp would have chosen to sleep in the open chimney space, presumably on top of the very fire which he had kindled for his comfort.
“Someone must ha’ put that there,” said Walsh to himself. “That” seeming a more suitable way of describing the human relic than the more problematical “him” or “her.”
The upshot of the discovery was that a message was sent to Scotland Yard, telling of the gruesome discovery of unrecognisable male remains in Kirkham Barns. Chief Inspector Warner had recently sent out an “all stations” message, describing the missing author as fully as Eleanor Clarke’s account allowed. Superintendents had been requested to report immediately to the Yard in the event of any discovery which might seem to bear on the problem of the missing man.
Thus it came about that Warner and Bond discussed the news from Ross and its possible bearing on their researches.
“I shall go straight down there and look into it,” said Warner. “The whole thing is a queer story, but if Lestrange were killed and his murderer is at large, I think I had better put a man on to keep his eye on Miss Clarke. She is the only person who can give us any information, and consequently she is a real menace to the murderer, if such there be.”
“Yes, that’s true enough,” said Bond, “but there’s another puzzle to face, sir. If Lestrange were killed, it looks as though the housekeeper must be a party to the crime. Why didn’t Mrs. Fife send a message to Miss Clarke, telling her not to come to Temple Grove again until she received further instructions? That’s a point which has bothered me all along.”
“We’ve both been worrying away at this end of the story, like a dog with a bone,” said Warner. “I’m hoping that this Ross find may give us a different angle for our observations. I could hazard a dozen different explanations of the Temple Grove story, only we have nothing to correct them by. Assumptions don’t get us anywhere without concrete evidence.”
“Well, the evidence up there sounds concrete enough,” said Bond. “Let’s hope that it fits in with some of your assumptions, sir.”
When Warner arrived at Ross, he found two interesting pieces of news awaiting him. On examination of the calcined body found in Kirkham Barns, the Divisional Surgeon reported that a bullet had been found embedded in the brain. The second discovery was even more interesting. The remains of a sturdy, leather-bound pocket-book which must have been in one of the dead man’s pockets had not been completely destroyed by the flames. Its leather cover had charred through, and most of the pages reduced to ash, but a few sheets in the middle of the closely-bound little volume still showed traces of handwriting. These had been treated by an expert and photographed, and Warner was able to recognise the queer, crabbed handwriting of Vivian Lestrange.
“Death caused… Carbon Monoxide… Hydrocyanic…” ran some of the decipherable words, and then “Varens killed on…” Detective-Inspector Foster was much intrigued by these suggestive fragments, but Warner only shrugged his shoulders.
“If that is Lestrange’s body, one has got to remember that he was a writer and that his favourite theme is the mystery story. These jottings probably referred to some plot for a novel or short story. However, one thing is certain, the writing in that book is Lestrange’s, and that fact connects up the body you have found here with the hypothetical writer we are seeking in London.”
“Why hypothetical?” demanded Foster, and Warner replied:
“The only person who testifies to the existence of Vivian Lestrange is his secretary, Eleanor Clarke. Apart from her, no one has seen the man. Bond, who has been working with me, is still suspicious of Eleanor Clarke’s good faith. His theory is that the so-called secretary is really the novelist and that her whole story is a cleverly contrived blind.”
“Well, I’m jiggered!” exclaimed Foster. “That’s a tall story, that is. How does he account for the body at Kirkham?—unless the novelist lady bumped off one of her friends, and then invented a character to fit the part.”
Warner grinned. “That’s the idea,” he said, “but for the time being I’m going to take the lady’s word for it, and assume that she is telling the truth, until I find evidence that she isn’t. Now before we set out, tell me a bit about this cottage, and any ideas you’ve got on the subject yourself.”
“Kirkham is seven miles from Ross by road,” began Foster, “and nine miles by the river. You can reach the cottage by two ways,—either by going through the village of Kirkham and descending the hill they call the steep, or else by following the path by the river. If your witness is telling the truth, one can assume that Lestrange was killed in London and his body transported here by car. Now I can’t believe it’s possible that anyone took a car through Kirkham village and down the steep without being noticed. It’s a precipitous hill and only fit for farm carts to go up and down. Although it’s hard to say nowadays that any hill is too stiff for a modern car to tackle, yet I don’t believe that any motorist would have taken the risk of a spill with a cargo like that on board. No one has ever been known to get a car down that hill yet, and I don’t believe it’s possible. Now take the other alternatives. There’s a road along the river valley from Ross to Tenbury,—only that’s three miles from Kirkham. After that there’s only a footpath, but it would be possible to take a car all the way if you were careful, because the gates are all wide enough to let the hay carts go through. The third possibility is to go by car as far as Winyon, on the opposite bank of the river, and then to borrow old Dick Barton’s boat and reach Kirkham Barns by water.”
“Do you think that’s possible considering all the circumstances?” asked Warner, and the other nodded.
“Yes. I’d say it was the least difficult on the whole. There’s a lane which runs from the main road at Winyon straight down to the river by Barton’s cottage. The old man’s as deaf as a post, and he’d never hear a car at night. I know he leaves his oars in the boat out of pure laziness,—I’ve told him he deserves to lose the whole outfit. It might take the best part of half an hour to pull up the river with the stream against you, but you’d be pretty safe in Barton’s old tub.”
“In either case, we have one point to guide us,” said Warner. “Anyone who succeeded in getting a corpse into Kirkham Barns must have been very well acquainted with the neighbourhood. In other words, there has been local talent on the job.”
“You’re right to some extent,” said Foster. “That cottage is very far from being in the public eye. Kirkham is a tiny village—only a dozen houses in all, with no pub and no amenities for the tripper. Charries don’t go there because the road is so narrow, and joy riders don’t go there because you can’t get a car down to the river. There are mighty few people who can be aware of the existence of that cottage by the river—only anglers, the village folk themselves, and Sir Duncan Grant and his friends.”
“And that brings us to a point I’ve been thinking about on my journey up here,” said Warner. “A few details about Sir Duncan Grant are indicated. I’ve looked him up in Who’s Who. Age sixty, born in Monmouth, made a fortune out of munitions during the war, knighted for his services to the country, retired after turning his iron works into a company and is now among the ranks of the gentry. Said to have been ‘privately educated,’—meaning self-made, I take it?”
“That’s about it,” said Foster with a grin. “However he’s abroad at present.”
“So much the better for him,” returned Warner. “How long has he owned that cottage?”
“He bought some land after he was knighted, including Kirkham Barns, where his grandfather lived and brought up a family of six. In some ways Grant is rather a likeable chap; he’s not in the least ashamed of his humble origin, for one thing, and he likes staying in that cottage all by himself and cooking his own food, and calling the villagers by their front names. It’s people who come up against him in business who see the other side of the picture. He’s as hard as nails and puts the screw on like a real Shylock.”
“Well, I seem to have made a bowing acquaintance with the main facts,” said Warner. “Now if you’ll take me to the scene of action I should like to envisage the likeliest means of transporting corpses to outlying districts.”
Getting into the police car with Foster, Warner set out for Kirkham. They took the main road to Monmouth and after about six miles, turned off along a narrow, untarred road, running between high hedges. As they climbed up steadily from the river they gained a magnificent view of the valley some three hundred feet below them, with the silver Wye twisting and turning between the woods, here spreading out into a wide sheet of water, there narrowing to a silver channel which ran swiftly between the steep banks. On both sides of the valley the ground rose to lofty hills which formed the skyline, and away to the south the grand contour of the Yat Rock reared its craggy heights against the sky. Warner sniffed the keen air appreciatively.
“I like this,” he said. “There must be grand fishing in the river below there.”
“Ay, the fishing’s good enough,” replied Foster. “There’s salmon and trout in plenty. Sir Duncan lets some of his tenants fish in his waters, and you’ll find the postman and blacksmith catching fine trout when the river’s in flood. It’s low now, more’s the pity. We’ve had no rain for weeks.”
“Are you an angler then?” asked Warner, and the other replied,
“Yes, but I wasn’t thinking of that. If the river had been in flood lately, we should have had some tracks in the soft ground by the river side to tell us if a car had been along the dales. The hay’s only just starting to grow and the ground is dry and hard. Still, there should have been tracks if a car had been driven from Tenbury to Kirkham Barns,—and there aren’t any. That’s why I favour old Barton’s boat.”
The village of Kirkham turned out to be even smaller than Warner had anticipated. He saw the two farm houses, six cottages and two other fair sized houses, comely old buildings with their half-timbered walls and mullioned windows. A tiny church and still tinier school completed the count, and Warner asked how many children went to the school. “About a dozen,—sometimes less,” said Foster. “The school mistress has a soft job I reckon,—she lives in that cottage yonder—a nice little place.”
Leaving the car outside Lewis’s farm, the two men turned down the steep, and Warner understood why Foster had said that it was impossible to drive a car down the hill. The ground fell at a slope which Warner assessed at one in four, and the surface of the lane was rutted in miniature river beds, showing how the rain raced down in a torrent after a storm. In places the soil and loose stones were all washed away and the living rock gleamed under the trickle of water which flowed across to drain into the ditch on the eastern side, for the drain was biased laterally as it descended the hillside. The banks were gay with primroses, anemones and violets, and white blackthorn shone among the young foliage of hazel and larch, the latter marvellously green in the tender afternoon light.
“I say this is a damn fine spot,” said Warner. “It’s almost too good to be true, considering the way the countryside’s being urbanised. Old Grant will be pretty sick about his cottage being mucked up. If once you got to care for a spot like this, I can imagine you’d just worship it.”
“He’s got plenty of money to put it to rights,” replied the other prosaically. “He’ll need it, too. They’ll have to bring everything across the river. The farmers won’t let any lorries through the meadows to spoil the hay. There you are. That’s it.”
